Based on the name, it would seem that it didn't strike the ground. So was the earthquake caused by the sonic boom of the meteor? If so, wouldn't that be so loud as to deafen a significant number of people?

Quote:

The National Weather Service eventually solved the mystery, tweeting "USGS confirms meteor occurred around 810 pm, causing a magnitude 2.0 earthquake."

Right, I forget about how low a logarithmic scale can go. A geology teacher once said that a 1.0 earthquake was someone closing a door and a 2.0 was slamming a door. According to the USGS people don't usually feel a 2.0 earthquake.

No to feeling the earthquake, nor would I expect to considering the distance from where it was reported.

We did hear it. We were inside and did not notice any bright light (curtains drawn). It sounded like a long roll of thunder. We checked for weather in the area and then went back to watching Victoria. Did not hear any emergency vehicles, so assumed it wasn't too big a deal. Saw the report of the meteor while checking online before going to bed.

Best guess from local reports is that it was a meteor that broke up (hence the sound). If any pieces landed, they are probably out near Howell, MI. The 'earthquake' was probably a result of the shockwave hitting the ground in just the right spot to be detected.

Would have loved to have seen it, but the videos from the area indicate is was only visible for bout 2 seconds.

Well, for the sake of being a pedantic fool whenever possible (I apologise in advance - as pedantic fools are wont to do), it's not exactly a log 10 scale for every step. One step corresponds to a 101.5 increase rather than 101. (So by the GenYus scale, it's about 32 logs for a 2, about 1000 logs for a 3 and so on. )https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_magnitude_scale.

I've come to the conclusion, after experiencing many great and small quakes -from 9 to 1, that the magnitude is a poor predictor of whether one is felt. Sometimes people in the same room will feel one strongly while others won't notice anything at all, for example if they are walking or otherwise already moving.

I've noticed the same. There appears to be a lot of factors involved in whether someone feels it or not. It seems that feeling earthquakes is something people get better at with experience. When I first move to California as a child, I didn't feel the minor ones for more than a year. My youngest daughter noticed the same thing when she moved to Ecuador.

I've come to the conclusion, after experiencing many great and small quakes -from 9 to 1, that the magnitude is a poor predictor of whether one is felt. Sometimes people in the same room will feel one strongly while others won't notice anything at all, for example if they are walking or otherwise already moving.

When I was visiting my brother in Japan, there was a small earthquake one day, and my brother called "earthquake!" from another room, but I didn't feel it at all - I was sitting on the loo...

Ironically a couple of years later my brother was visiting me in Suffolk and there was a small earthquake which we both felt! But I would have taken a while to believe it was an earthquake if he'd not been there to say "yes, that was an earthquake". Small earthquakes are more common in the UK than I'd realised, but it's still rare to feel them - that's the only earthquake I've ever felt, although apparently not the only one I've "experienced".

When we lived in Massachusetts, we felt a minor earthquake except we thought it was a large dump truck passing by the house. If it wasn't for the news telling it was an earthquake, we'd have never known. But then we never felt the 4.1 earthquake outside Phoenix in 2015. We'd have been in bed and weren't woken up.

I completely missed two earthquakes when I lived in WA. I don't remember where they were on the scale, but most other people felt them.

The first time, I was in my car, on a bridge, and I thought a heavy truck had driven across the bridge, until the DJ on the station I was listening to said "Whoa, that had to be an earthquake, I'm looking into it" and put another song on.

The second time I was at home with my daughter and neither of us noticed anything. The cat didn't react, either. Our apartment was on the ground floor, partly underground at the front, maybe that was why.